On the band's third album, there is a constant search for a frequency that is thrilling and a commitment to it.

Strange Peace

There is a brilliant and brutal simplicity to the music the Canadian punk band Metz makes: loud, cynical, severe, sharp around the edges. The group is composed of three members -- guitarist and vocalist Alex Edkins, bassist Chris Slorach, and drummer Hayden Menzies -- who seem to share the same goal: to create maximum friction between their instruments and to do so at the highest possible volume. As a result, the music has almost no concern for melody. It has more in common with the sounds of factories, of hard and dangerous work that requires large machines and hot materials. Some punk bands will give you a great tune. Metz is not one of them. Their songs resemble panic attacks, convulsions, violent spasms. In the act's harsh asceticism, you feel a retrenchment toward punk’s original values and a way forward.

The general intention of early punk bands was to remove the high-concept, high-order cognition of the most ornate forms of rock and pop music. They wanted to take the spiritual and structural skeleton of early rock 'n' roll and amplify it, make it noisier and more rebellious. To revise history and use those revisions as a template for the future. The bands who don’t understand both sides of this equation -- tradition and progress -- tend to conceive of punk music as a mere act of nostalgia. They often use lo-fidelity recording techniques as a badge of authenticity, framing a strict allegiance to the past as the highest creative virtue. This is music made through influence rather than impulse, and it's not terribly useful or interesting.

Metz, mercifully, is not that kind of band. Metz is loud and abrasive in a way that is distinctly physical -- you respond to the music as a series of vibrations in your torso and skull -- and possible only with the clarity, fidelity, and volume of modern recording technology.

The band’s third album, Strange Peace, is very much like its first two, and that is a good thing. Each is single-minded in its purpose and methods. There are no ballads, no songs that are quiet or long or contemplative. Instead, there is a constant search for a frequency that is thrilling and a commitment to it.

“Lost in the Blank City” arrives near the album’s midpoint and wastes little time announcing itself. Eleven seconds in, a kick drum enters, with a bass guitar matching it in rhythm and tempo, as well as a harmonized vocal and riff. This lasts for ten seconds and is repeated as a kind of chorus. There are variations on this structure as the song progresses, but the feeling is the same: a convergence of tension and agony. The sense something might implode.

That frequency is no accident. It's a result of each musician attacking his instrument with as much intensity and force as possible. The guitar riffs are strained, panicked, serrated. The drumming is calibrated for impact, rather than rhythm. And Edkins’ vocals are caustic, barked or sneered as often as they are sung.

The ultimate effect is a paradox: musical harmony which simulates mental and emotional disharmony. A strange peace, contentment found through discord.

White Hills epic '80s callback
Stop Mute Defeat is a determined march against encroaching imperial darkness; their eyes boring into the shadows for danger but they're aware that blinding lights can kill and distort truth. From "Overlord's" dark stomp casting nets for totalitarian warnings to "Attack Mode", which roars in with the tribal certainty that we can survive the madness if we keep our wits, the record is a true and timely win for Dave W. and Ego Sensation. Martin Bisi and the poster band's mysterious but relevant cool make a great team and deliver one of their least psych yet most mind destroying records to date. Much like the first time you heard Joy Division or early Pigface, for example, you'll experience being startled at first before becoming addicted to the band's unique microcosm of dystopia that is simultaneously corrupting and seducing your ears. - Morgan Y. Evans

The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 70 songs that spoke to us this year.

70. The Horrors - "Machine"

On their fifth album V, the Horrors expand on the bright, psychedelic territory they explored with Luminous, anchoring the ten new tracks with retro synths and guitar fuzz freakouts. "Machine" is the delicious outlier and the most vitriolic cut on the record, with Faris Badwan belting out accusations to the song's subject, who may even be us. The concept of alienation is nothing new, but here the Brits incorporate a beautiful metaphor of an insect trapped in amber as an illustration of the human caught within modernity. Whether our trappings are technological, psychological, or something else entirely makes the statement all the more chilling. - Tristan Kneschke

"...when the history books get written about this era, they'll show that the music community recognized the potential impacts and were strong leaders." An interview with Kevin Erickson of Future of Music Coalition.

Last week, the musician Phil Elverum, a.k.a. Mount Eerie, celebrated the fact that his album A Crow Looked at Me had been ranked #3 on the New York Times' Best of 2017 list. You might expect that high praise from the prestigious newspaper would result in a significant spike in album sales. In a tweet, Elverum divulged that since making the list, he'd sold…six. Six copies.

Under the lens of cultural and historical context, as well as understanding the reflective nature of popular culture, it's hard not to read this film as a cautionary tale about the limitations of isolationism.

I recently spoke to a class full of students about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". Actually, I mentioned Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" by prefacing that I understood the likelihood that no one had read it. Fortunately, two students had, which brought mild temporary relief. In an effort to close the gap of understanding (perhaps more a canyon or uncanny valley) I made the popular quick comparison between Plato's often cited work and the Wachowski siblings' cinema spectacle, The Matrix. What I didn't anticipate in that moment was complete and utter dissociation observable in collective wide-eyed stares. Example by comparison lost. Not a single student in a class of undergraduates had partaken of The Matrix in all its Dystopic future shock and CGI kung fu technobabble philosophy. My muted response in that moment: Whoa!

Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell at St. Mark's Church in New York City, 23 February 1977

Scholar Christopher Grobe crafts a series of individually satisfying case studies, then shows the strong threads between confessional poetry, performance art, and reality television, with stops along the way.

Tracing a thread from Robert Lowell to reality TV seems like an ominous task, and it is one that Christopher Grobe tackles by laying out several intertwining threads. The history of an idea, like confession, is only linear when we want to create a sensible structure, the "one damn thing after the next" that is the standing critique of creating historical accounts. The organization Grobe employs helps sensemaking.